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Man finally receives postcard sent in 1940

MIAMI, FL - NOVEMBER 15: Paint coveres U.S. Postal Service mailbox on November 15, 2012 in Miami, Florida. The United States Postal Service reported a record annual yearly loss of $15.9 billion, more than triple the $5.1 billion loss last year. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

A postcard received two days ago by Alan Marion gives a whole new meaning to the term “snail mail.”

The postcard, which was meant for Marion’s great-grandmother Florence, was postmarked with the date February 20, 1940.

After the postcard first arrived at a post office in Butte Falls, Oregon, in July of last year, it took post office employee Sunny Bryant nearly ten months to track down one of Florence’s relatives.

Written in pencil decades ago, the postcard reads:

Arrived in Portland at 8 o’clock. Having a fine time. Be home sometime Sat. –Blanche.

Marion received the long-overdue postcard on April 14, 2014.

“To me, it’s one of those things that must have been meant to be,” said Marion.

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Bryant, who had only been working at the Butte Falls Post Office for one month, noticed the card in circulation and was astonished. “I looked at it, and I’m like, ‘What am I supposed to do with this?’” she said.

So she began to poke around the small community, trying to figure out who the letter could belong to.

“I got little clues here and there, but nothing that I could go any further on,” Bryant said.

Determined to find a recipient for this delayed postcard, she enlisted the help of Charleen Brown of the Rogue Valley Genealogical Society.

While Brown was chatting at the Butte Falls Post Office with another member of the RVGS about genealogy, Bryant asked Brown what she thought of the dated postcard.

Intrigued, Brown began to dig.

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She decided to use the technology that didn’t exist in 1940 ... the Internet.

After finding the original postcard recipient in the U.S. Census database, she used Ancestry.com to find Florence Marion in the system.

Because Butte Falls is such a small community, and was even less populated in the ‘40s, Brown was sure she had found the right Florence Marion.

Suddenly Brown realized that she actually knew Alan Marion. He was an RVGS member and had once told her of his distant relatives who had lived in Butte Falls.

When Brown told him of Florence Marion, he confirmed that she was his great-grandmother, and that’s when Brown told Marion about the postcard.

“Somebody’s been looking over my shoulder here, and it must have been my great-grandmother,” said Marion, on the discovery of his great-grandmother's postcard.

He did not know of Florence until he began his research at the Jackson County Genealogy Library, and he knew even less about the postcard sender, Blanche.

“We have not figured out the relationship Blanche may have had with Florence Marion,” he said.

The mystery remains as to why it took the postcard so long to be delivered.

According to USPS officials, one theory is that the postcard actually made it to its destination in the appropriate amount of time, but ended up in a drawer or attic and was found years later and put back into circulation.

We may never know why Blanche’s postcard to Florence suddenly surfaced, but Marion is sure happy it did. Who wouldn’t love to get a piece of family history like this one?

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